I would like to thank Target for hanging a Merry Christmas banner in their store this month and for allowing their help to wish their customers “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” And what a pleasure it was to see King Soopers closed on Christmas Day so families could enjoy the day together. That’s the way it should always be.

Hobby Lobby has it right when they take out a full-page ad in The Post to observe what Christmas is all about: the Christ child’s birthday.

Thank you also to any other stores that observe the real meaning of Christmas.

Jean M. Baldwin, Aurora

This letter was published in the Dec. 29 edition.

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A demonstrator holds up a sign outside the Supreme Court on June 30 in Washington D.C. The Court decided to relieve businesses with religious objections of their obligation to pay for women’s contraceptives in the Hobby Lobby case.(Pablo Martinez, AP file)

The stark juxtaposition of the U.S. Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision alongside the Colorado Department of Public Health and Education (CDPHE) report on the plummeting rate of abortion related to unintended teen pregnancy could not be more instructive.

The Hobby Lobby stance, ostensibly based on the scientifically and philosophically thin concept that some forms of contraception are like abortion, ignores the reality we face. If you want to reduce the number of abortions, the CDPHE data clearly show that the most effective strategy is the widespread and easy availability of free or cheap contraception. Fiscally, the return on investment in saved medical costs related to the unintended pregnancies is demonstrable, to say nothing of the averted social catastrophe that teen pregnancy can become.

If the social right really wants to limit abortion, they will need to leave the fantasy world of imaginary abstinence they inhabit and join the real world where decisions and actions have consequences: Limiting contraception causes abortion.

Kent Heyborne, M.D., Denver

This letter was published in the July 14 edition.

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Activists who support the Affordable Care Act’s employer contraceptive mandate demonstrate outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on June 30. The Supreme Court dealt a blow to President Barack Obama’s health-care law, ruling that closely held companies can claim a religious exemption from the requirement that they offer birth-control coverage in their worker health plans. (Pete Marovich, Bloomberg)

Sen. Mark Udall’s reactionary op-ed over the Hobby Lobby decision proves again why he is unfit to be re-elected to the Senate. His comments are divisive, inflammatory, and an attempt to distract from his record. For example: “… five male justices turned back the clock on decades of gender equality … .” Really? How is this the case? I didn’t know Obamacare was around for decades. He goes on to state how crucial birth control is, even though the Supreme Court’s decision does not prevent birth control. “Empowering a woman to plan her family ensures she can pursue higher education, build a career, or buy a house,” he wrote. So I guess because of the Supreme Court decision, women won’t have careers, can’t go to school and will live in hovels.

Come on, Senator; defend your record to Coloradans if you can, and leave the hyperbole to the president, who’s really good at it.

Jim DeLoughry, Colorado Springs

This letter was published in the July 13 edition.

I would like to thank Sen. Udall for his support for all women’s reproductive and health care rights. The five Supreme Court judges who voted in favor of Hobby Lobby’s stance on withholding certain forms of birth control are all conservative Catholic males who, as Udall correctly states have, “turned back the clock on decades of progress toward gender equality.”

That our country is debating birth control again is ridiculous, if not frightening. I am very tired of conservative, religious fanatics forcing their beliefs on the rest of us. I urge every Coloradan to vote for Sen. Udall and others who share his progressive beliefs to help protect us from this modern American Taliban.

Carol Carpenter, Denver

This letter was published in the July 13 edition.

Sen. Mark Udall’s piece ends with this sentence: “No one should come between a woman and her doctor — not politicians, not bureaucrats, and definitely not bosses.” I agree. So please repeal Obamacare as quickly as possible.

Jacques Voorhees, Keystone

This letter was published in the July 13 edition.

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Customers walk into a Hobby Lobby store in Oklahoma City in late June. The craft store has been at the center of a debate over the concept of “corporate personhood.” The principle has been lurking in U.S. law for more than a century, and the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, gave it a big boost last week when it ruled that certain businesses — including Hobby Lobby — are entitled to exercise religious rights just as do people. (Sue Ogrocki, The Associated Press)

Corporations are now persons, so their bosses can benefit from the protection of a conservative Supreme Court. One wag suggested that a corporation can now adopt children and get married. Did he mean to imply that they can thus create slave labor? Even more ironic is the fact that the courts have established that corporations cannot be charged with criminal conspiracy — because a person obviously cannot conspire with herself or himself. Thus, the managers of corporations can breathe together in huddles, creating scams against the rest of us human individuals. Is this just, Justice Alito?

Phillip K. Tompkins, Denver

This letter was published in the July 13 edition.

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For big-government-minded liberal secularists — as appears to the be the case with The Denver Post’s editorial board, reacting with its “sky is falling” editorial — the Supreme Court’s rebuke of the Affordable Care Act’s overreach has to be a particularly difficult pill to swallow, a special combination of frustration, disappointment and nausea. For what it’s worth, many like myself know exactly how you are feeling right now. We felt the same way when Barack Obama got elected for a second term.

Basically, the U.S. Supreme Court just decided that employees are not entitled to their own religious beliefs, and they have to submit to corporation owners’ beliefs. Indeed, it was the law of the land in medieval ages; are we really, as a society, so conservative?

The job of Supreme Court justices is to verify that laws are compliant with the Constitution, not their own personal beliefs.

Jerry Borysiewicz, Lakewood

This letter was published in the July 3 edition.

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, if you believe life begins at the beginning, and you believe life is our most precious possession, then we as a human race should make laws to protect life, not destroy it at its earliest and most vulnerable stage. Only with life do we have the potential for anything. No government should mandate that any entity should be forced to assist anyone with the termination of life; whether it is considered “viable” or not, it is a human life. I speak of those contraceptive methods that terminate a pregnancy, not just prevent it.

John Pickard, Lakewood

This letter was published in the July 3 edition.

Religious liberty is not the “right” to impose one’s religious views on one’s employees. The two are essentially opposites. Shame on Hobby Lobby for bringing this case, and shame on the Supreme Court for this silly decision.

Paul Haynes, Boulder

This letter was published in the July 3 edition.

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Dottie Lamm seems to conveniently forget that the same First Amendment which grants her the freedom to boycott whomever she wishes and the freedom to stress her opinions in the press also grants “freedom of religion and the free exercise thereof.”

Amongst Christians and especially in the Catholic faith, the unborn’s right to life, which begins at conception, is dogma which cannot be compromised. Any individual, including the owners of Hobby Lobby or Catholic organizations such as Little Sisters of the Poor, cannot be forced under penalties of fines to violate their fundamental religious beliefs, even through indirect actions. If they did so, they would be accomplices in the enactment of the sin — in this case, helping subsidize through medical insurance the use of the “morning after” pill and various intrauterine devices.

The question before the Supreme Court is: Can the federal government enact laws which violate the religious beliefs of individuals and organizations? Let’s pray not.

Peter Bruno, Arvada

This letter was published in the April 21 edition.

What a well-reasoned and informative column by Dottie Lamm to expose the outrageous hypocrisy in Hobby Lobby’s suit now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Adam Zyglis’ accompanying political cartoon also hit a bull’s-eye with its sarcastic implications. I fervently hope our esteemed court members understand these facts and the effect their June decision will have on women’s reproductive health care.

Sandra M. Goodman, Denver

This letter was published in the April 21 edition.

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Margot Riphagen wears a birth control pills costume as she protests in front of the Supreme Court on March 25 as the court heard oral arguments in Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby.(Charles Dharapak, The Associated Press)

I read Vera Boyd’s letter to the editor regarding Hobby Lobby’s right to deny birth control since it “is not part of health care per se.” She went on to say that “women wanting to practice birth control can just go to the store and buy it.” I hate to rain on her parade, but the birth control that most women (and by extension, their male partners) find the most effective — birth control pills or IUDs — can only be obtained through a health care provider. Which does seem to qualify birth control as a part of health care per se.

Tonya Hindman, Brighton

This letter was published in the April 7 edition.

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The real question is whether employers should be required to pay for their employees’ contraceptives and abortions. Hobby Lobby, the Catholic Church, Little Sisters of the Poor and similar petitioners are not telling women that they can’t have these products and procedures. It is rather that they object to paying for them as a matter of religious conscience.

For Rev. Homblette to accuse Hobby Lobby’s motives as “profit-seeking” is disingenuous. It is the reverend’s proposition that would trample on the deeply held beliefs of many millions of others, and nothing establishes the legitimacy of her position.

Dig into your own purses for your contraceptives and abortions, ladies. No one else should be burdened to pay for what is your personal responsibility.

I had to laugh when letter-writer Alex Brown described a corporation as a piece of paper. Corporations are groups of humans with concerns for their working humans’ rights. Birth control is not part of health care per se, and those corporations and employees whose religious beliefs view it as wrong should not be forced to pay for it.

Those women wanting to practice birth control (and heaven knows that is better than abortion) can just go to the store and buy it. The issue of contraception is just one of the reasons the Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act and eliminate those parts that are not related to heath care.

Vera R. Boyd, Denver

This letter was published in the April 2 edition.

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This May 22, 2013, file photo shows customer at a Hobby Lobby store in Denver. (Ed Andrieski, The Associated Press)

As a minister in a minority religious group, I know the value of religious freedom. I believe that the plaintiffs in the Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby case, which was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, clearly do not have the full picture. Religious freedom does not mean imposing your religious viewpoints on others, like your employees. True religious freedom, as protected in the U.S. Constitution and other laws, means that each person must be able to exercise their own religious beliefs freely and make decisions according to their conscience. Allowing a for-profit corporation to skirt this established public law by claiming religious offense inherently privileges one set of beliefs over another and equates the company’s profit-seeking venture to the deeply held spiritual truths held by all people of faith. Such an assertion cheapens the meaning of religion and the sanctity of spiritual communities, which is deeply troubling indeed.

Rev. Kierstin Homblette, Denver

The writer is a minister for Unitarian Universalist Congregations of Colorado.

This letter was published in the March 29 edition.

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As a non-attorney, there’s certainly a lot about the law I don’t understand. The Hobby Lobby case involving Obamacare and religious freedoms is a good example. This case (named Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.) is being brought to the court by a private corporation and argues the law is violating the religious freedoms and rights of the corporation by requiring the corporation to provide specified insurance coverage.

Now, corporations, unlike natural persons, don’t have hearts, brains, lungs and the like. Corporations exist on a piece of paper. Given that fact, how exactly did a piece of paper acquire religious beliefs? I know how I did — sitting in a pew most Sundays. But as I think about it, I don’t ever recall a corporation sitting next to me.

Our constitution was written for natural persons. When we engage in tortured legal reasoning (corporations are people), we lose sight of just who our Founding Fathers were thinking of when they met in Philadelphia to draft one Jim Dandy of a document.

Alex Brown, Englewood

This letter was published in the March 28 edition.

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Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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